Tuesday Voice: A fifth red herring of the healthcare biz

Milk

By Jim Rix

The impetus for this red herring is the commercial I saw this morning on the Today Show. “Start your morning with the power of protein – MILK.” Really? Does protein provide the power/energy for the human body? I think we all know that the body gets its energy from carbohydrates and not proteins. After all, do marathon runners protein-load or carbo-load before a race? Protein builds our muscles but it’s carbohydrates that provide the energy that powers them. In fact, the human brain operates exclusively on carbohydrates. That’s why under periods of starvation the human body will convert its protein (muscles) into carbohydrates to keep the brain and hence the body alive. (This process is called gluconeogenesis.)
    Starvation occurs only when the body does not get enough carbohydrates. So you would think that carbohydrates are essential. But Wikipedia says, “No carbohydrate is an essential nutrient in humans. Carbohydrates can be synthesized from amino acids [protein] and glycerol, which is obtained from fats, by gluconeogenesis.” This twisted logic no doubt pleases the meat and dairy industries. Could they somehow be behind it? Hmmm…In any event, you don’t want gluconeogenesis because it means you’re starving.
    The dairy industry in the past has claimed, “Milk is nature’s most perfect food.” I do not disagree. However, the problem is that when people hear the word “milk” they think “cow’s milk.” While this sound bite is quite clever, it should be corrected to: “Cow’s milk is nature’s most perfect food – if you’re a cow!”
    Cow’s milk is designed by nature to grow an 80-pound calf to 800 pounds in 8 months, while human milk grows an 8-pound baby to 18 pounds in 8 months. A cow grows roughly 4 times faster than a human. Is it any surprise that cow’s milk has 4 times the protein of human milk?
    Nature is perfect. It has designed milk specifically for each species. But not only are we humans the only species that drinks milk after being weaned, we drink milk designed for another species! It makes no more sense to drink cow’s milk than, for example, rat’s milk, does it?
    WHO (The World Health Organization) makes recommendations based upon science. Its recommendation is that we humans get 5% of our calories from protein. Not coincidentally, this is the same percentage of protein found in human milk. That’s right, during our greatest period of growth nature provides 5% of our calories as protein. Why as adults would we need any more?
    So I hope if you worry about protein, it’s because you may be getting too much of it and not too little!

Dietary supplements:





Previous red herring: Calcium
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Copyright © 2014 by Jim Rix

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